


Renascence

by The Spike (spike21)



Series: The Gospels [4]
Category: Angel: the Series, Lone Gunmen, The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-04-22
Updated: 2002-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:01:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spike21/pseuds/The%20Spike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>never say goodbye</p>
            </blockquote>





	Renascence

Everything's hazy and white for a long time and John thinks he could maybe be thinking a little clearer. There doesn't seem to be anything urgent about it. His mind is full of random things. Jimmy. Radio Shack. Orange juice. He's a little thirsty and this is the first thing he can actually relate back to himself.

He's thirsty and he's weak and he can see things through the dimming haze. Faces. Monstrous faces and that's... so *unfair*. Scared now and angry. He's been a good boy, dammit, he wants to say. He's stood for justice and for truth. He *died* for the sake of his fellow man. Were his mortal sins so much greater than that?

His one mortal sin. Maybe.

And even so.

The air is dark now, thick with smoke that stings his eyes, his skin. There is a drone of voices, chanting. Flicker of flames around him but no heat from them, just a deep, cold ache in his chest. It gets worse by the second. Ripping, rending muscles and tendons, bending bone. His punishment beginning and he realizes the rocking he feels is his body trying to gather breath to scream.

His muscles strain and pull his head pull back on his neck, open his jaw wide enough to crack and his diaphragm spasms. Air tears down his throat and into lungs in a burning rush setting every nerve in him on fire. White hot pins and red hot needles. The roar of rhythmic thunder in his ears. It makes him writhe and arch. Burning hardness under him. Fire, fire, everything's on fire and no matter how much he needs to scream he can't make a sound.

It goes on and on and then somehow it's less. The roaring quiets, his breathing eases. The heat beneath him transmutes to the cold of bare, smooth stone and he's not on fire anymore. He's just... alive.

It aches but in a more familiar way. Just what his body feels like with 40-something years on it, like an old pair of shoes worn to fit his feet but left unworn too long. Uncomfortably lenient of his flaws.

Alive.

It's quiet in the room now. No more chanting, just the crackle of flame and quiet breathing. Someone coughs. The smoke is still thick and bitter and sweet at once. John can taste it. Can't *stop* tasting it. Still licking at his own tongue when a cool hand skims his naked thigh.

He gasps.

"He doesn't look much like a killer," says a woman's voice. "But if he's as good at his work as you are at yours." John opens his eyes to see, yes, a woman standing over him. Cold, lovely face. Dark hair. Expensive power suit. The kind of woman he has broken his heart over, twice now. The kind of woman he's learned to love without a trace of trust. He wonders if he will love her too. Fingers travel up his body, stop at his face and tap against his cheek. Turn his head.

"He's good."

They're not her fingers. The face he faces is not her face and John stops breathing again, feels his heart trip over itself, painfully.

Can only mouth the word.

Alex.

And Alex smiles. Slow, warm smile and bending closer, closer until he fills John's vision. Alex. A little older, a little thicker. His prettiness odder than ever on the man who definitely isn't 25 anymore. There is a small indentation in the center of his forehead, circular, not so much a scar as a stamp. But the eyes haven't changed a bit. Still dangerous. Still....

His.

The woman is still talking in the background. Something about work and bargains and there are still, just out of focus behind Alex's shoulder, monsters. Demons. None of it seems to matter. Alex's eyes lock him into Alex's orbit. Nothing new in that.

"Is this...?" John's voice is a sad, old croak. Alex rattles a plastic cup, slips an icechip into his mouth. Cold and sweet as it melts. Nothing more beautiful in the world

"L.A." Alex says. "Just L.A."

"And I'm...?" Alex's face gives nothing away.

"Here," he says, flatly. There's a question there. One that he's going to have to come up with an answer for, when really he doesn't have anything in him right now but more questions. How and why and Ringo and Melvin and what and where and...

"John?"

"Yeah," he says, and Alex's hand is on his face, his good left hand. His heart is pounding fast and strange.

"Trust me," Alex tells him. Probably lies. But his smile isn't lying. His smile is full of wicked promises and the will to make them all come true.

John can't help but smile back.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Original A/N: Fuck you Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz all your cronies and the horses you rode in on. This'll probably make more sense if you've read "John" and the Gospels fics and "Triple Cross", but if you haven't don't stress. This is mostly therapyfic for me.
> 
> A/N 2011: While The X-Files was a going concern I wrote a series of fics in which John Byers of the Lone gunemen fell in love and had a strange relationship with Alex Krycek. The creators killed off Alex Krycek, which broke my heart, but the Gunmen lived on, for a while in thier own series The Lone Gunmen. Eventually I wrote a fic in which Lex Luthor enlists Lilah Morgan (AtS) of Wolfram and Hart to bring Alex back to life -- that was therapy for me because a) Krycek! and b) Lex really needed a comptent body guard. Then, the creators of the Lone Gumen decided to kill off John fucking Byers...


End file.
